PAGING HUSBAND NO. 8

"She's like a great empire that rises and falls, and rises again," says People Page editor Belinda Luscombe of Elizabeth Taylor. Today, she's falling. The actress announced she would temporarily part ways with Larry Fortensky, the twice-divorced construction worker she met in 1988 at the Betty Ford Clinic. "We both need our own space for a while, so we have agreed to a trial separation," read a two-line press release. "We hope that this is only temporary." If not, Fortensky will join a group of five Taylor alumni that includes Eddie Fischer, Virginia Senator John Warner and the late, twice-honored Richard Burton. "Her life reads like a tabloid with the weight and the drugs and the marriages," says Luscombe. "She personifies what Americans seem to want in their celebrities: beautiful, interesting, and troubled." Besides, she adds: "Her separation might overshadow the problems she's having with Black Pearls."